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Virtual worlds as cultural models

Published: 22 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Thirteen gamelike virtual worlds illustrate issues that overlap social science and information science, because they embody rather clear theories of society and culture: World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Age of Conan, Pirates of the Burning Sea, A Tale in the Desert, Entropia Universe, Anarchy Online, The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, EVE Online, Star Trek Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. A fourteenth, Star Wars Galaxies, illustrates the possibility that not all virtual worlds embody clear theories. After describing the thirteen, this essay discusses their economic systems, social systems, communication challenges, and the ways in which autonomous agents and semi-autonomous secondary avatars enrich interactive complexity.

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology
ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology  Volume 1, Issue 1
October 2010
117 pages
ISSN:2157-6904
EISSN:2157-6912
DOI:10.1145/1858948
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 22 October 2010
Accepted: 01 June 2010
Revised: 01 June 2010
Received: 01 March 2010
Published in TIST Volume 1, Issue 1

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  1. Culture
  2. game
  3. virtual world

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View all
  • (2023)Revealing Social Group Long-Term Survival for Smart Cities Based on Behavior Graph Structures Using Virtual GameIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.328056810:21(18733-18744)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
  • (2016)Virtual HRD and national culture: an information processing perspectiveEuropean Journal of Training and Development10.1108/EJTD-04-2015-002540:1(21-35)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2016
  • (2013)Ancestor Veneration AvatarsHandbook of Research on Technoself10.4018/978-1-4666-2211-1.ch017(308-321)Online publication date: 2013
  • (2010)Virtual SustainabilitySustainability10.3390/su21031952:10(3195-3210)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2010

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